“Sometimes you just want to write a club banger and sometimes you want to send a message” - hmv.com talks to Wilkinson

As he releases his new album Hypnotic, an album with vocal contributions from the likes of Wretch 32, Karen Harding and Shannon Saunders, we spoke to dance maestro Wilkinson about how it all came together...

How did making this album compare to making your debut Lazers Not Included?

“Making this album was very different. The first album was a journey to find myself and what kind of artist I wanted to be. This one is more the journey between releasing that album and being able to tour the world. I’ve discovered lots more music and seen how my music has been taken in by fans all over the world. Making this album has been a balance between touring so heavily, over 100 gigs a year, and still being creative and making music. Some of these songs took six months to get right. It’s been a struggle, but an amazing struggle.”

You must have had a bigger contact book this time, how did you decide which vocalists you’d work with?

“It’s all built around the live show. I had singers touring with me and I wanted to feature them, working with too many different people means you can never recreate it live and you want to make sure you can share the stage with your singers as well as the studio. Even the writers I worked with, I wanted them to be on more than one track, I don’t want to be one of those artists who writes with everyone they can and end up with an album that’s lost its soul. I wanted a small family.”

A lot of your contemporaries in dance music are turning their back on albums, just releasing tracks, but having an album is still important to you?

“I know a lot of people will tell you albums are dead, but to me they’re chapters, it’s more than just putting out tunes every month, I want my albums to be a snapshot of where I am in my life. I still feel like I’m developing and it’s nice to capture every stage.”

What kind of album is it lyrically? Is that you? Or your collaborators?

“I try and aim for statements. You can’t be writing about love all the time, the last 100 years of music have rinsed it. There’s anxiety on there, there’s fear too, I tend to go for bigger concepts, there’s a song about what happened in Paris on there, a bit more depth and meaning. Sometimes you just want to write a club banger and sometimes you want to send a message.”

When did you settle on Hypnotic for the title?

“The name of the album was one of the most difficult thing, I’m terrible at coming up with names and I was dead against calling it the name of a track. But then I thought about it some more and my aim with the music and live show is to try and put people in a state of trance. I can’t call it state of trance, someone’s nabbed that, so hypnotic won the day…”

You must be excited to have this out for the summer...

“I’m dead excited. We’ve got a lot of festivals lined up and I can’t wait to play everyone the new music.”

Wilkinson’s new album Hypnotic is out now and available to purchase here in hmv’s online store.